The Normalization of U.S.-Cuba Relations: the Best Accomplishment of President Barack Obama
Monday, April 13, 2015
The Normalization of U.S.-Cuba Relations: the Best Accomplishment of President Barack Obama
by Rodrigue Tremblay
(Author of the books “The Code for Global Ethics”, and
“The New American Empire”)
“At the beginning of 1959, United States companies owned about 40 percent of the Cuban sugar lands—almost all the cattle ranches—90 percent of the mines and mineral concessions—80 percent of the utilities—practically all the oil industry—and supplied two-thirds of Cuba's imports.”
Senator John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), (speech at a Democratic Dinner, Cincinnati, Ohio, October 6, 1960, during the 1960 Presidential campaign)
“I believe that there is no country in the world including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part owing to my country's policies during the Batista regime.
—I approved the proclamation which Fidel Castro made in the Sierra Maestra, when he justifiably called for justice and especially yearned to rid Cuba of corruption. I will even go further: to some extent it is as though (Dictator) Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States. Now we shall have to pay for those sins.
—In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first Cuban revolutionaries. That is perfectly clear.”
President John F. Kennedy, October 24, 1963, (interview with journalist Jean Daniel, The New Republic, published on December 14 1963, pp. 15-20)
More:
http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/tremblay=1168.htm
Good reads:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016121920
= new reply since forum marked as read
October 24, 1963, one month before he was murdered. Though it was published shortly after his murder, I have no doubt that the CIA knew about these statements. His views on Cuba were among their motives for killing JFK, which also included his firing of their Director, Allen Dulles, for lying to him about the "Bay of Pigs" fiasco, his refusal to nuke Russia and Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis, his backchannels to Krushchev and Castro to get around the CIA, his negotiation of the very first effort to limit nuclear weapons (the "Test Ban Treaty"
, his shipment of wheat to Russia after a failure of Russia's wheat harvest, and his plans for the 1964 election campaign, which included a serious plan for world peace that the American people clearly would have voted for in big numbers.*
Figures in Miami's mafia are implicated in the assassination plot but it was not their plot. It was the CIA's, which has been proven beyond question by James Douglass in his recent book, "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters."
I agree that Obama's opening to Cuba is the premier accomplishment of his presidency, thus far. (It's not over yet.) He also, at the very least, supports the peace talks in Cuba between the Colombian government and Colombia's leftist rebel army (the FARC), a civil war that has been going on for some 70 years, and which the U.S. (especially the Bush Junta) exploited, using the corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs" for the purpose of killing off labor leaders, killing off or displacing millions of peasant farmers, and generally prepping the ground for U.S. "free trade for the rich."
I am very glad that Obama has not obstructed this peace initiative, and I'm certain that it would not be going forward if he did not support it. We should not be starry-eyed about either thing, however--opening to Cuba, or Colombia's peace talks. Though both are testaments to brilliant diplomacy, by all sides, our Corporate Rulers are looking greedily at Cuba's beaches (not to mention some of their medical breakthroughs) and at Colombia's rich resources and land (often stolen from peasants) for yet more expansion and exploitation, and so is the Pentagon. In short, Obama would not support these things if the MIC-CIA/Corporate Rulers did not think it was the right moment to do so, given all the prep. I do NOT think that Obama is a free man, nor in full charge of the government. I think that every president since JFK has known WHY JFK was assassinated and that that will be their fate if they step off the MIC/CIA 'reservation.'
This is the "why" of James Douglass' title ("JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters" . This is WHY IT STILL MATTERS.
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*(I know. 1964 was my first vote for president. I voted for the "peace candidate," LBJ. LBJ won that election in the biggest landslide in history BECAUSE OF his peace platform. The American people were ready to turn that corner, from world war to a peaceful world. The trouble was that LBJ was lying during that campaign--and conducting the escalation of the CIA's war in Vietnam even as he prattled about peace. I will never forget that vote. I voted for peace--and instead saw TWO MILLION PEOPLE slaughtered in Southeast Asia before it was over, with almost 60,000 U.S. soldiers killed. Douglass lays out what JFK was going to do and why, and what we lost when the CIA decided that they weren't going to let him do it. In addition to tracking every point of their devious and tangled plot, and its coverup, Douglass very convincingly and with abundant documentation, provides their motive.)
